Got the Whole World In My Hand

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Too subtle?


Wondering how villainous a character is? Sometimes you have to wait for them to beat innocent puppies, but sometimes you can tell right off the bat when they stamp themselves with a logo that displays their contempt for humanity by either depicting the Earth (or any other beloved symbol of the free world) being squeezed, seized, stabbed, grabbed or suffering any other kind of torment.

At least they didn't decide to blow it up.

See also Earth-Shattering Poster.

Considering the He's Got the Whole World in His Hand song, this may sometimes be used as a subtrope of Rule of Symbolism. What better way to show that you ARE GOD than this?

Examples of Got the Whole World In My Hand include:


Anime and Manga


Comic Books


Films -- Live-Action

  • The United Underworld in Batman: The Movie has a emblem of the Earth being squeezed to death by a giant octopus.
  • The soulless Insuricare company from The Incredibles has a logo of a hand holding the world.
    • Heck, Their slogan is "Your Life is in Our Hands".
  • The Logo for Star Trek: Nemesis featured a bird of prey clutching a pair of globes representing the planets Romulus and Remus
    • A less stylised version had been established as a Romulan symbol in The Next Generation.
  • The logo for corrupt company "Engulf+Devour" in Silent Movie.
    • It was a parody of the conglomerate Gulf+Western, who at the time owned Paramount Pictures. Hey, it's a Mel Brooks movie!
  • The aliens do this to Earth in the movie poster for the Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds.
  • Subverted in Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Part of the set up to make us think Daniel Clamp is a Corrupt Corporate Executive is that his corporate logo is a big "C" squeezing the globe like a vise. It turns out, however, that Clamp is really just The Wonka, while his assistant is really the bad one.
  • The Tagruato logo in the Cloverfield universe is a pair of hands holding up a world. Probably a vestige of the company's older incarnation, 力の手 (Chikara no Te or "Hands of Power" if you were wondering, because the ARG for whatever reason aggressively enforces this Bilingual Bonus).
  • The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail is actually a parody of the Sovereign's Orb of the United Kingdom, one of the British Crown Jewels, which in turn is a globus cruciger. European monarchs are traditionally depicted holding such a globe as a symbol of their dominion over the world.
  • The company from The Losers features a logo with the Earth being gripped by the ends of the letter "G".
  • Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me plays with this trope when Dr. Evil picks up a giant globe and starts dribbling it like a basketball.
  • In an early example of this trope, Charlie Chaplin's Hinkel, The Great Dictator (1940), dances with an inflatable globe. When Hinkel squeezes it too much... the globe explodes.


Literature


Live-Action TV

  • The Forrester Family Crest in Mystery Science Theater 3000 depicts a hand squeezing the Earth
    • In the intro to Season 8, Pearl is stuffing a ballon Earth into her purse, and Season 10, squeezing a foam Earth in the same manner as the crest.
  • The Crest for the Terran Empire in Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Mirror, Mirror" depicts a knife through the Earth.
  • On Falling Skies, when Jimmy is being attacked by the Skitter in the school, he throws a globe at the Skitter's head. The Skitter catches it, in a semblance of this trope [dead link], examines it momentarily... then crushes it and tosses it aside.


Music

  • The cover of The Moody Blues' album "A Question of Balance" uses an unusual "hand through Earth" variant combined with Design Student's Orgasm.
  • The cover for KMFDM's single "Godlike."


Tabletop Games


Videogames

  • The best example of this ever is in Wild ARMs, specifically, the 3rd game; the Big Bad has an attack called "Nightmare" wherein she is shown as this gigantic being that can literally palm the planet in one hand. Does this attack do massive damage? Cause all status effects? Lower your MP? No. It causes you to fall asleep. Which you are probably immune to at this point in the game. Wonderful!
  • A hand grabbing the Earth is shown in Deus Ex as the symbol of Majestic Twelve. It features prominently in the introduction cinematic. In Deus Ex Human Revolution, a statue of this symbol is displayed in the basement of the Picus building, with one employee email saying that it looks like "something out of a Bond movie."
  • In the first Command & Conquer game, the 'barracks' of the Brotherhood of Nod was the 'Hand of Nod', a monumentally impractical building resembling a huge hand grasping the planet. In the sequels, they downgraded to something more... practical.
    • In Tiberian Sun (the first sequel), the barracks instead resembled a hand grabbing the ground itself. It's back to being a hand holding a globe in Tiberium Wars.
    • In Renegade, the symbol of the Black Hand, the elite corps of the Brotherhood, is a, you guessed it, black hand tightly grasping a red-tinted planet Earth.
  • Star Control 2 had a poster with two different hands grasping Earth as if fighting over it.
  • The Combine's insignia in Half Life 2 vaguely resembles an Alien claw clamped around the world.
  • There's a piece of promotional art for Warcraft 3 featuring Legionlord Archimonde grasping a world in his hands. One of the Warcraft RPG books by White Wolf has a picture of Sargeras (Archimonde's boss) doing the same.
  • A nice example is Might and Magic series, where it is a logo for the Kreegan... that does not, actually appear as their symbol in-game. It is also a RL logo of NWC.
  • In Tokimeki Memorial 2 Music Video Clips: Circus de Aimashou, Mei Ijuin does the "world floating in front of her outstretched arms" variant in a sequence of her Music Video Clip.
  • In Last Alert, the evil syndicate ruling over the world has an insignia of this sort.

slowbeef: Jesus' skeleton is crushing the Earth!

  • Andross does this on the Game Over screen in Star Fox 64.


Web Originals


Western Animation

  • Phineas and Ferb episode "Chez Platypus": Dr. Doofenshmirtz pops an Earth-Patterned Balloon while on his "evil" date.
  • The Simpsons: In one episode, Homer wears a shirt that depicts Uncle Sam holding the globe in both hands and taking a large bite out of it, with the motto, "Try and stop us."
  • The opening to Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? shows our heroes picking up puzzle pieces left behind by the title thief; when put together, they form a 3D handheld model of a globe...which Carmen ends up holding in her hand during the opening's final scene.
  • The logo for Transformers Armada's" "Unicron Battles" arc has the titular villain cradling Cybertron. Granted, it's less effective here because Unicron is slightly smaller than Cybertron, but still.
  • Taken literally in one of the Superfriends shorts. An alien being named Colossus is a giant who looks like a Viking—a Viking who's taller than the planet Jupiter. He picks up the Earth between thumb and forefinger, and puts it in a bottle as a souvenir. (Apache Chief has to defeat Colossus by saying "Inekchok" over and over until he grows to be the same size, then wrestling with him. While thus distracted, Superman lifts the Earth out of the bottle and puts it back in its proper orbit.)


Real Life

  • The globus cruciger, a globe with a cross on its top to represent Christ's dominion over the world, is a traditional symbol of royalty in Europe since the Middle Ages. Christ, angels and monarchs are depicted holding the globe (ergo the world) in their hands as a symbol of authority. (See the pictures in the other wiki.)
  • Sherwin Williams paint stores feature a globe being covered in (red!) paint and the slogan: "Cover the Earth!". Frickin creepy.
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